• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.387-395
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• 2011

Single-blade centrifugal pumps are widely used as sewage pumps. However, the impeller of a single-blade pump is subjected to strong radial thrust during pump operation because of the geometrical axial asymmetry of the impeller. Therefore, to improve pump reliability, it is necessary to quantitatively understand radial thrust and elucidate the behavior and mechanism of thrust generating. This study investigates the radial thrust acting up on a single-blade centrifugal impeller by conducting experiments and CFD analysis. The results show that the fluctuating component of radial thrust increases as the flow rate deviates from the design flow rate to low or high value. Radial thrust was modeled by a combination of three components, inertia, momentum, and pressure by applying an unsteady conservation of momentum to the impeller. The sum of these components agrees with the radial thrust calculated by integrating the pressure and the shearing stress on the impeller surface. The behavior of each component was shown, and the effects of each component on radial thrust were clarified. The pressure component has the greatest effect on the time-averaged value and the fluctuating component of radial thrust. The time-averaged value of the inertia component is nearly 0, irrespective of the change in the flow rate. However, its fluctuating component has a magnitude nearly comparable with the pressure component at a low flow rate and slightly decreased with the increase in flow rate.

• Transactions of The Korea Fluid Power Systems Society
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.10-18
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• 2011

In the beginning of this study, pressure in a cylinder and flow rate from a cylinder of a rotating-cam and fixed-cylinder type radial piston pump are investigated through numerical simulations, so that the simulation results might be utilized as basements for examining physical phenomena occurring in the pump assembly. Then, for supplying basic knowledge on pump design, pressure, flow and leakage characteristics of the pump assembly under the variations of major design parameters are investigated through numerical simulations. At the end, key design parameters influencing upon volumetric efficiency of the pump are listed.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.256-264
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• 2016

To meet the demand of higher handling capacity, a mixed-flow submersible deep well pump was designed and tested. The main hydraulic components are made of plastics, which is free of erosion, light-weight, and environment-friendly. To simplify plastic molding process, and to improve productivity, an axial-radial guide vane was proposed. To clarify its effect on the performance, a radial guide vane and a space guide vane are developed as well. By comparison, the efficiency of the pump equipped with the axial-radial guide vane is higher than the radial guide vane and is lower than the space guide vane, and its high efficiency range is wide. The static pressure recovery of the axial guide vane is a bit lower than the space guide vane, but it is much larger than the radial guide vane. Taking the cost and molding complexity into consideration, the axial-radial guide vane is much economic, promoting its popularity for the moderate and high specific speed submersible deep well pumps.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.138-145
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• 2017

The problem of non-uniform inflow exists in many practical engineering applications, such as the elbow suction pipe of waterjet pump and, the channel head of steam generator which is directly connect with reactor coolant pump. Generally, pumps are identical designs and are selected based on performance under uniform inflow with the straight pipe, but actually non-uniform suction flow is induced by upstream equipment. In this paper, CFD approach was employed to analyze unsteady hydrodynamic characteristics of reactor coolant pumps with different inflows. The Reynolds-averaged Naiver-Stokes equations with the $k-{\varepsilon}$ turbulence model were solved by the computational fluid dynamics software CFX to conduct the steady and unsteady numerical simulation. The numerical results of the straight pipe and channel head were validated with experimental data for the heads at different flow coefficients. In the nominal flow rate, the head of the pump with the channel head decreases by 1.19% when compared to the straight pipe. The complicated structure of channel head induces the inlet flow non-uniform. The non-uniformity of the inflow induces the difference of vorticity distribution at the outlet of the pump. The variation law of blade to blade velocity at different flow rate and the difference of blade to blade velocity with different inflow are researched. The effects of non-uniform inflow on radial forces are absolutely different from the uniform inflow. For the radial forces at the frequency $f_R$, the corresponding amplitude of channel head are higher than the straight pipe at $1.0{\Phi}_d$ and $1.2{\Phi}_d$ flow rates, and the corresponding amplitude of channel head are lower than the straight pipe at $0.8{\Phi}_d$ flow rates.

• Transactions of The Korea Fluid Power Systems Society
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2010

This paper presents the experimental results of the radial piston type oil pump with new mechanism for a metal diaphragm hydrogen compressor. Generally, metal diaphragm type hydrogen compressor systems are operated by oil hydraulic power. In this system an oil compensating pump has been demanded to compensate for a leakage oil head chamber. The metal diaphragm type hydrogen compressor consists of an oil compensating pump, commonly used hydraulic piston pump and driven by main crank shaft. The radial piston type oil compensating pump with new rolling contacted piston mechanism is developed and experimented. The developed piston element of the radial piston pump consists of piston, steel ball, return spring, two check valves, eccentric cam and ball racer. In this study, designed 4 type pistons as and orifice hole. Operating characteristics and pressure ripple characteristics are tested under no load to 60bar loaded with every 20bar increasing step and pressure ripple and flow rate are experimentally investigated.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.1600-1607
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• 2004

Performance of a regenerative pump is evaluated based on the calculated through flows using the CFX-TASCflow code. Flow calculations are performed in one vane to vane space of the impeller and side channel. The flow is very complex three dimensional with a strong radial vortex due to centrifugal force and an axial vortex due to re-circulating flow between the impeller and the side channel. Momentum exchange on the plane between the impeller and the side channel are evaluated to estimate design parameters and viscous losses in the pump. The present study contributes to showing the capability of flow simulation of complex flow in the regenerative pump by comparing the calculated performance with the measured value.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.404-412
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• 2008

As a suitable volute configuration in the range of low specific speed, circular casing is suggested in this study. The internal flows in a centrifugal pump with the circular and spiral casings are measured by PIV and analyzed by CFD. The results show that the head and efficiency of the pump by a circular casing of very small radius are almost same as those by the spiral casing. Even at the best efficiency point, the internal flow of the pump by circular casing is asymmetric, and vortex and strong secondary flow occurs in the impeller passage. The radial velocity becomes higher remarkably only near the region of the discharge throat. The flow in the impeller outlet is strongly controlled by the circular casing because the velocity distribution almost does not affected by the position of the impeller blades.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.1640-1645
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• 2004

The pumping characteristics of a single-stage disk-type drag pump ( DTDP ) are calculated,for the variation of the vertical clearance between a rotor and stator and of the radial clearance between a rotor and casing wall, by the three-dimensional direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC)method. The gas flow mainly belongs to the molecular transition flow region. Spiral channels of a DTDP are cut on the both the upper and lower sides of a rotating disk, but the stationary disks are planar. As a consequence of results, the vertical and radial clearances have a significant effect on the pumping performance. Experiments are performed under the outlet pressure range of 0.4 $^{\sim}$ 533 Pa. When the numerical results are compared to the experimental data, the numerical results agree well qualitatively.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.64-68
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• 2016

High Temperature Superconductor power cable systems are being developed actively to solve the problem of increasing power demand. With increases in the unit length of the High Temperature Superconductor power cable, it is necessary to develop highly efficient and reliable cryogenic pumps to transport the coolant over long distances. Generally, to obtain a high degree of efficiency, the cryogenic pump requires a high pressure rise with a low flow rate, and a partial emission type pump is appropriate considering its low specific speed, which is different from the conventional centrifugal type, full emission type. This paper describes the design of a partial emission pump to circulate subcooled liquid nitrogen. It consists of an impeller, a circular case and a diffuser. The conventional pump and the partial emission pump have different features in the impeller and the discharge flow passage. The partial emission pump uses an impeller with straight radial blades. The emission of working fluid does not occur continuously from all of the impeller channels, and the diffuser allows the flow only from a part of the impeller channels. As the area of the diffuser increases gradually, it converts the dynamic pressure into static pressure while minimizing the loss of total pressure. We used the known numerical method for the optimum design process and made a CFD analysis to verify the theoretical performance.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.191-198
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• 2011

Based on the consideration that the cavitation would affect the operation stability of miniature pumps, the 3-D turbulent cavitating flow in a test pump was simulated by using a mixed cavitation model and k-${\omega}$ SST turbulence model. In order to investigate the influence of inlet geometry parameters on the cavitation performance of the miniature pump, two more impellers are designed for comparison. Based on the results, the following conclusions are drawn: 1) Cavitation performance of the double suction shaft-less miniature pump having different impeller is equivalent to the centrifugal pump having ordinary size, though the flow passage at impeller inlet is small; 2) The miniature pump having radial impeller can produce much higher pump head, but lower cavitation performance than that having the impeller based on the conventional design method; 3) It is believed that by applying the double suction design, the miniature pump achieved relatively uniform flow pattern upstream the impeller inlet, which is favorable for improving cavitation performance.